Infiltrator
by Medie
Summary: She never thought her duty would be this difficult...


Title: Infiltrator  
  
Author: Medie  
  
Email: medisonthezone.net  
  
Fandom: Enterprise  
  
Rating: PG  
  
Pairing: none  
  
Spoilers/References: Vague season 3 spoilers.  
  
Author's Note: Um...yeah. This? This was the story that wouldn't die. The character that wouldn't let go. I suppose you can consider it a response to the Descendants challenge I posted at ewbscribble once upon a time.  
  
Disclaimer: Enterprise? Not mine. Sara? Yes. Who she's pretending to be? No. Confused yet? G  
  
Summary: She's never expected it to be this hard.  
  
"Infiltrator"  
by M.  
------  
  
She never expected it would be this hard. Lt. Commander Sara Reed has been a Starfleet officer for twenty years. Went to the Academy at the age of eighteen and never looked back. She is the daughter of a proud family lineage. A lineage begun by Malcolm Reed two hundred years before and she wears that lineage with a comfort other members of her family do not. Sara believes it is because she chose a path that the majority of the Reeds would not. For the majority of her career, she has been an officer in Starfleet Intelligence. Lies and deceit are her stock and trade. In an organization that is considered by many to be unfailingly honest and truthful, she has crafted her ability to be completely the opposite. She has spent more time wearing the faces of others than she has her own. Modern technology has given Starfleet Medical the ability use microcellular surgery to craft the face of an Intelligence agent into whatever shape Starfleet desires.  
  
Surgery so delicate and so careful, most of their compatriots in the field would not be able to detect the alterations with the diagnostic equipment available to them. So complete that the surgeons and doctors of enemy governments would not be able to find it.  
  
Sara has long become accustomed to looking in the mirror and seeing a different face looking back.  
  
Which, perhaps, is why her personal life, in direct contrast to her professional one, is a disaster. She married. She divorced. It wasn't Martin's fault. Her ex-husband. Commander Martin Madden. It wasn't his fault. He is a good man. A great officer. He adored her. She loved him. She loves him still. He tried. She didn't try hard enough. A marriage in Starfleet is never easy. It's almost impossible when both are officers, but when one of them is an Intelligence agent...she failed him in that. Failed them. Sometimes she believes she should have asked for reassignment when she married Martin but then she reminds herself of the same thing she did then. Intelligence isn't so easy to walk away from. She had her duty. Martin had his. That they were in such conflict...that is regrettable. But her duty has always been her focus.  
  
Reeds have always been very conscious of their duty.  
  
She keeps track of his career, even now. If something happens to her, it is Martin that will be contacted. Not her family. She just couldn't bring herself to change it and he has never asked. They both cling to what was. Even if they do not say so. But then...maybe they just do not speak enough for him to have the chance. In some ways, Sara is grateful for that. She can pretend. She carries the memory of her marriage, the good and the bad, with her at all times. It is her strength. Beneath the lies and the deceit she weaves into the fabric of her existence, he is the single thread of truth. The one she uses to come back to herself when the assignment ends.  
  
It is, perhaps why this assignment is so hard. It is an assignment unlike any other she has ever been given. She is quite certain it is unlike any assignment any Starfleet Intelligence agent has ever been given. Intelligence prides itself on secrecy but an agent being sent two hundred years into the past to pose as a officer in a now defunct military organization...that would be an assignment that even Intelligence would have difficulty covering up. But, nevertheless, here she is. Wearing the face of a woman now secreted away on the Defiant, shadowing Enterprise through space, and pretending to be this MACO named MacKenzie. Walking on a ship she grew up hearing stories about. Chatting and joking with men and women who are legend in her family. Even sparring with her own ancestor, amused at his irritation that a MACO could hold her own against him, wishing she could tell him the truth. Reassure him that, it's okay, she really is Starfleet. But, she can't.  
  
She has her duty.  
  
The duty that she has always had. To protect the Federation. To ensure the safety of her citizens...with her life if necessary. But it is so very odd...The temptation to tell them things, to make veiled jokes, is so strong. Hearing the story of the Ferengi's assault on the NX-01 very nearly reduced her to tears of laughter. If they only knew...the story of the Enterprise's encounter with the Borg gives her chills. Scares her to no end. Sara still remembers, can never forget, the horrors of Wolf 359. She knows her duty, however, her orders. She obediently planted a virus in Starfleet Headquarter's computers before leaving to join the NX-01's crew, neatly corrupting the data on the Borg. Stories from Starfleet's early days are strong in her memory. Computer failures, lost data, though not commonplace, were not unheard of. One encounter with a strange alien race...easily dealt with.  
  
And therein, is what scares her. They are so very vulnerable. They haven't yet learned the lessons that will make Starfleet what it is to Sara. They don't know how to defend themselves the way that Starfleet one day will. There is a very real danger, that the Federation will die before ever being born and that, more than anything she has ever dealt with, scares her to the core. She has never had so much resting on one mission. On one assignment. Before, she has always known that failure means that she may never see her homeworld again. But, this is worse. If she fails...there will be no home to go back to.  
  
It is a sobering thought that kills the little temptations that tease her. For every time she wishes to sit down and tell Archer about Pike, Kirk, Garrett...Picard. She remembers that if they fail, these captains will never exist. That the lineage of the Enterprise will die with the NX-01. In those moments, she remembers her assignment and remembers her duty and Sara knows...she can not fail.  
  
She never imagined it would be this hard...but, she knows well, hard or no. She has her duty and she will see it through.  
  
She is, after all, a Reed.  
  
Finis 


End file.
